The 2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and
Communication Technologies category has been awarded to engineer and
mathematician, Thomas Kailath, for creating knowledge with transformative
impact on the information and communication technologies that permeate
everyday life. These pioneering developments laid the mathematical
foundations enabling solutions to some of the challenging problems in
this area
and have also served to break through the barrier of chip miniaturization.

Kailath, the Hitachi America Professor in the School of Engineering,
Emeritus, was cited as, ``that rare combination: a scientist with the
ability
to solve profound mathematical problems and translate them into practical
applications, generating new technologies and transferring them to
industry."

He was nominated by the President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society,
Jos\'{e} M. F. Moura, at the Carnegie Mellon University, with supporting
letters from individuals at the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering; the
Institute of Advanced Studies of the Technical University of Munich; the
School of Engineering of Stanford University; the Department of Mathematics
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Princeton School of
Engineering and Applied Science; the Israel Institute of Technology; and the
Imperial College, London.

In the course of his teaching career, the awardee has mentored over a
hundred doctoral and postdoctoral students. ``I was able to see the
opportunities and enter new fields because I learned to use my students as
intelligence amplifiers," says Kailath. ``So, I regard this prize as a
tribute also to them, to their brilliance and dedication."

The prize, which carries a purse of 400,000 Euros, will be awarded at
ceremonies in Madrid in June 2010.

The BBVA Foundation is the corporate social responsibility arm of the
BBVA Group, a multinational financial services corporation based in
Spain. BBVA collaborated with the Spanish National Research Council in
the awards process. Professor Kailath has also won many prestigious
awards, prizes, and recognitions from various professional socities.
He is a member of National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of
Sciences, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Foreign
Member of the Royal Society of London, England and Indian Academy of
Engineering. He also received the third highest civilian honor of the
Government of India, the Padma Bhusan Award. He has received honorary
doctorates from Universities in France, Spain, Sweden, Scotland and
India.

The programme targets students of science and engineering, informatics and
mathematics who have already completed their first degree but have not yet
finished their master’s course. The students will work together with
scientists from JSC on topics of current interest in research and
development.
Depending on their previous experience and interests, they will be
involved in
various fields of work, for example:
Computational Science, Applied Mathematics
High-Performance Computing, Visualisation
Computer Architectures, Grid Computing

The programme will run for ten weeks from 2 August to 8 October 2010.
The students will be able to use the supercomputers at JSC, including
JUGENE – currently the fastest computer in Europe. They should naturally
be familiar with computer-oriented areas of their subjects. In addition,
they should also have practical computer experience including at least a
good knowledge of programming with C, C++ or Fortran on Unix systems.

Trilinos 10.2 is available for download. It includes enhancements to
many existing packages and seven new packages:

-Mesquite: Applies a variety of node-movement algorithms to improve
the quality and/or adapt a given mesh.
-Optika: Provides trilinos developers with easy access to GUI input
methods for their programs.
-Piro: Piro is striving to be the single unifying layer above all
nonlinear solver, time integration, optimization, and UQ packages.
-STK: Contains capabilities intended to support massively parallel
multi-physics computations on dynamically changing unstructured
meshes.
-Stokhos: A package for intrusive stochastic Galerkin uncertainty
quantification methods.
-Tifpack: Contains preconditioners that operate on the templated
linear-algebra objects provided by the Tpetra package.
-TriKota: TriKota is a convenience package that builds the Dakota
(http://www.cs.sandia.gov/dakota/index.html) framework underneath
Trilinos as if it were a Trilinos package. Dakota contains a wide
array of algorithms for optimization and UQ.

Overview: The Trilinos Project is an effort to develop algorithms and
enabling technologies within an object- oriented software framework
for the solution of large-scale, complex multi-physics engineering and
scientific problems.

We are happy to invite you to participate in the FEniCS'10 workshop
May 10-12 2010 hosted by CTL (http://ctl.csc.kth.se) at KTH
(http://www.kth.se) in Stockholm, Sweden. FEniCS
(http://www.fenics.org) is a collaborative effort towards the
development of free software for automated solution of differential
equations.

This workshop gives an opportunity to identify important issues in the
project and discuss and learn about new developments. One important
focus of this workshop is an upcoming "1.0" stable release geared
towards a general audience, together with a focus on performance, in
particular parallel algorithms.

Instructions for authors are available at
http://scan2010.ens-lyon.fr/Second-CFC.html

SCOPE The SCAN symposia gather researchers in scientific computing who
work on the numerical quality and the verification of computed
results. Techniques and tools in use include, but are not limited to,
interval arithmetic, floating-point as specified by the IEEE 754-2008
standard, exact computations, symbolic approaches, formal proof,
sensitivity analysis... The scope of the SCAN conferences covers all
aspects, from theory to implementation and applications, with a strong
emphasis on verification of computed results, as well as on
arithmetic, programming, and algorithmic tools for this purpose.

NASC is an international conference organized by the Chinese numerical
algebra
group starting from 2006. The conference highlights recent advances in
theoretical, computational and practical aspects of linear and nonlinear
numerical algebra. The aim of the conference is to gather numerical algebra
and scientific computing experts to exchange ideas and discuss future
developments and trends of these closely related fields.

The topics of NASC10 include, but are not limited to: solutions of
linear and
nonlinear equations; least-squares problems; computations of eigenvalue
problems; tensor decompositions and computations; parallel computations;
constructions and analyses of preconditioners; methods and theories of
structured matrices; and applications of numerical algebraic techniques and
algorithms.

An important event during the conference is the award of the Applied
Numerical
Algebra (ANA) Prize which is awarded to the two best papers by young Chinese
scientists working on numerical algebra and scientific computing.

We are pleased to announce a special issue of Linear Algebra and Its
Applications in honor of Dan Sorensen's 65th birthday in the year 2011.

All papers submitted must meet the publication standards of Linear Algebra
and Its Applications and will be subject to the normal refereeing procedure.
In particular, we encourage papers related to Dan's work areas, including

The US National Research Council (NRC) Associateship Program is
accepting applications for two-year appointments for postdoctoral
research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
in Gaithersburg, Maryland and Boulder, Colorado. Among the topic areas
of interest are image analysis, dynamical systems, combinatorial and
discrete algorithms, applied optimization & control, scientific data
mining, immersive visualization, and parallel & distributed computing,
as well as modeling and analysis in fluid dynamics, electromagnetics,
materials science, computational biology, network science, and quantum
information. For details see

http://math.nist.gov/mcsd/jobs/postdoc.html.

Competition for postdoctoral awards across all NIST technical program
areas is managed by the NRC. Applications must be submitted directly to
the NRC; the deadline for applications is May 1. This competition is
identified as the "NIST ARRA" competition at the NRC site. Note that
the NRC program at NIST is restricted to US citizens.

A PostDoc position is available within the project FIRB-IDEAS
"Advanced Numerical Techniques for Uncertainty Quantification in
Engineering and Life Science Problems" funded by the Italian Ministry
of Education and related to the ERC-IDEAS Starting Grant 2007 call.

The project focuses on the development of numerical techniques for
uncertainty quantification in engineering and life science
applications, described through systems of Partial Differential
Equations with uncertain input data, including forcing terms, boundary
or initial conditions, model coefficients, etc. Specifically, it
addresses the case of input uncertainty described in terms of random
fields and defined in high or infinite dimensional probability
spaces. Two specific applications will be addressed: 1) the study of
contaminant movement in groundwater flows; 2) the study of the
bio-electrical activity of the heart.

More information available at http://mox.polimi.it/~nobile/NUMQUES

Candidates should have a strong background in numerical analysis and
scientific programming. Expertise on the specific applications is
appreciated, although not required. Previous experience with
uncertainty quantification and/or high dimensional sparse
approximation techniques is also desirable.

The position is for up to 30 months, starting as soon as possible.
Gross salary is around 30K euros/year.

Applications including detailed curriculum vitae and names and contact
information of few available references should be submitted in PDF
format to Dr. Fabio Nobile (fabio.nobile@polimi.it). The positions will
remain open until filled.

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research assistantship for a
project on the ``Analysis of Numerical Methods for Partial Differential
Equations with Random Data''. Candidates should have a Ph.D or expect to
have
submitted a Ph.D thesis in mathematics before the start of the project.
Candidates must have a background in the numerical analysis of partial
differential equations and have experience in finite element theory and
scientific computing. Experience with iterative methods and
preconditioning is
desirable but not essential.

The post is funded by the EPSRC and will be supervised by Dr. Catherine
Powell
and Professor David Silvester at the University of Manchester. The project
will run for three years, starting as soon as possible after 1st June 2010
(negotiable).

Informal enquiries by email can be sent to c.powell@manchester.ac.uk or to
david.silvester@manchester.ac.uk. Application forms and further details are
available from

Two fully-funded PhD student positions are currently available at the
Auckland Bioengineering Institute, New Zealand to investigate atrial or
gastrointestinal function. The scholarships will fund a tax free stipend
of NZ$25,000, research/travel grant of NZ$2900 and compulsory fees for
each year. The students will join an established and multidisciplinary
team of bioengineers, applied mathematicians, surgeons, and physiologists
in either the Cardiac Electrophysiology or Gastrointestinal Research
Groups. We have established collaborations and work closely with
international research groups including Universities in Sydney, Galveston,
Manchester, Stuttgart, Vanderbilt University and the Mayo Clinic.

We welcome applications from motivated students with excellent written and
oral English skills, a strong track record in bioengineering/applied
mathematics/clinical or equivalent background. Experience in computer
programming (e.g., matlab, C, C++, Fortan, scripting languages), and
mathematical analysis is required. Some experience with experimental
studies is preferred but not necessary. Potential projects may involve
improving the understanding of atrial or GI electrophysiology, mechanical
activity, fluid dynamics and involve skills such as numerical analysis,
signal processing, image processing, device prototyping and construction.
A 4 year undergraduate degree or Master's level degree is normally
required to directly enrol as a PhD student.